Basement Space
Substellar Archive

30th anniversary of a milestone Acid and Deep House.Remastered from the original tapes, new original full cover, 180 gram vinyl, insert with the words of Emanuele Luzzi aka Onirico.

currently the rediscovery of long forgotten japanese electronic, jazz and new age music is at a peak like never before. but although many re-issues already flood the record stores around the world: the large, diverse musical culture of japan still got some gems in store that are really missing.for example, it is still quiet around the the work of japanese bass player, new-age and ambient musi-cian motohiko hamase. when the today 66-years old artist started to be a professional musician in the 1970’s, he quickly gained success as a versed studio instrumentalist and started to be part of the great modern jazz isao suzuki sextett, where he played with legends like pianist tsuyoshi yamamoto or fu-sion guitar one-off-a-kind kazumi watanabe.his first solo album “intaglio” was not only a milestone of japanese new-age ambient, it was also fresh sonic journey in jazz that does not sound like jazz at all. now studio mule is happy to announce the re-recording of his gem from 1986, that opens new doors of perception while being not quite at all.first issued by the japanese label shi zen, the record had a decent success in japan and by some overseas fans of music from the far east. with seven haunting, stylistically hard to pigeonhole compo-sitions hamase drifts around new-age worlds with howling wind sounds, gently bass picking and dis-creet drums, that sometimes remind the listener on the power of japanese taiko percussions. also, propulsive fourth-world-grooves call the tune and all composition avoid a foreseeable structure. at large his albums seem to be improvised and yet all is deeply composed.

Four of the best from Field's 2003 CD-only album, Cocoon. Remastered for a first pressing on vinyl.

Reissue of the 1994 debut from Phil Western and Dan Handrabur's 'Off & Gone' project. A hallucinating document of the pair's initial jam sessions and what would become the genesis of a fruitful collaboration between two key members of the West Coast electronic music scene of the 90s/00s. Four tracks of deep, psychedelic techno, including the now-classic 'Namlohssa'. Re-mastered from the original DAT tapes.From Dan Handrabur [Dreamdoktor, Shukar Collective & 1/2 of Off & Gone]:I met the late Phil Western in the fall of 1992 on a visit to his record store, Oddysey Imports. There was always good music playing there, so I ended up hanging out for many hours, almost every day.It was very clear we had similar taste in music, be it the new electronic wave at the time or older music like Eighties British guitar pop, and vintage rock, not to mention ambient and world beats.A mutual friend, Robert Shea [Map Music/ Discotext], suggested we get together and jam; there was a trend going on to bring one's favorite synth to a buddy's studio and tweak knobs.We ended up making a couple of tracks which we showed Robert, a man with many connections in the new music business, by that I mean independent, forward-thinking labels from around the globe. His reaction encouraged us to release them. At the time, I was working on making a CD of my own music and tracks I had made with other tech- heads. Somehow the two cuts fitted quite well into the vibe of Outersanctum's "Frequencies From The Edge Of The Tektonic Plate" which we released in April of 1993.Sensing the possibility of a collaboration, we decided to move my equipment to Phil's place [he lived in a more permissive part of Vancouver where it was ok to work at a louder level].Armed with two Atari 1040st with midi and various synths, samplers, and drum machines, we started crafting what was to become our most important body of work of the mid-nineties, Off and Gone, Floatpoint and others. After a visit to Lopez island where Mike Kandel [1/2 of Exist Dance] had his studio, the three of us decided on the name [Off and Gone] and set a release date for our first EP. Needless to say, we were ecstatic about it since we were both very fond of the music Exist Dance was releasing.This was the incentive we needed and also a psychological push to work on more material. Our sessions were lengthy; there was not much talking and a lot of playing. Programming in Notator (now Logic Audio) was tedious but rewarding; mixes were tracked to DAT tape. Some gear without memory had to stay on for days until we were satisfied with the mixes. Occasional overheating and power outages were our biggest enemies and guests to the studio who carelessly pushed keys on synths, thus ruining arpeggios...We never used limiting or compression. We didn't own any of that gear, relying solely on the power of our sound generating devices. No audio editing was available back then, at least not to us. A few times, we snuck into Skinny Puppy's studio to play with their Pro Tools rig and track guitars and violin through the Eventide, which we resampled and used in tracks.At the time, we had the feeling of doing something important for the Vancouver electronic music scene, inspiring other musicians to build studios and strive to create new, interesting music, away from the industrial sound that defined the city for several years, for which we had the utmost respect.All the music we made together was purely for the joy of sound creation and a sincere love of dance and ambient music; without any desire for affirmation or commercial success. Throughout our relatively short but productive collaboration, there was a feeling of completing each other's ideas very easily, without arguments, in an almost telepathic way, something I personally have never experienced again with another musician.

Deep and trippy big room techno tracks on the fifteenth iteration of Reclaim Your City. The trip goes to Paris via Vienna with complimentary pair Eric Fetcher and Arthur Robert taking over for a round of cold-blooded club-busting blends. A full-on hypnotic affair leafing through the darker districts of dubbed-out deep techno, "RYCL.015" eases us in a sunken realm of unquiet oneiric folds and further afield, obscure crannies. Fetcher strikes first with "Arrival" - a pulsating meshwork of distressing signals going pong on the reverbs, as sturdy kick drums and skittish percussions guide the groove onto proper club-ready rails via a clinical 4x4 frame. Then comes Arthur Robert's "Petrichor", an enslaving roller tailored to catch you in its intricate web of sonar-like bleeping and wild, homing hats let loose like hounds on their prey, whilst you progressively lose track of your actual environment to enter a new world of multisensory stimulation and blurred-out abstraction. Flip the record and here is Robert's "Centipede" taking over with an uptempo cascade of heavily delayed machine talk, dust-clogged kicks and surgical 4x4 swing bound to have everyone losing their shit in the basement with shadow-knightly swagger and in-your-face attitude. Fetcher's closing number "Balter" adds a further hip-swaying, breaks-laden, rowdy spin to the overall forward-moving ride, but also some more warmth sound design-wise, which will most certainly find a positive echo in DJs looking for true-school hybrid weaponry - capable to keep the dancing clock ticking in full-swing, without jeopardising the after's chiller vibes. As per usual, RYCL.015 comes adorned with a bespoke piece of artwork, this time courtesy of talented Dutch photographer Joris Graaf, and will be pressed on 180-gram black and white marbled vinyl for the discerning heads.

ABT076 - CA - 2019Open Reduction Internal Fixation by Blue Hawaii